Moved To Hope In the Philippines

The road to recovery is a long and hard one, like the Chinese Proverb says To get through the hardest journey we need take only one step at a time, but we must keep on stepping. It is when you keep stepping that one day you look around you and realize that the light is breaking and hope is restored. We might not be there yet, but there is hope for the future.

We had one of these moments recently in the Philippines. We have been working tirelessly with some of our NGO partners for months, now bringing aid and helping the Philippines people pick up the pieces in the wake of Haiyan. We've had the privaledge of working on the "Child Protection Project" with some of our amazing NGO partners: Hope For the Nations and Ora International. We have been traveling throughout the Philippines providing relief & aid and working to bringing hope to the children and families most affected by the typhoon that hit the Philippines last November.

As part of the project we hosted The Big Family Day Event. It was an incredible day and the event was well received by the community with over 310 families (out of the 408 total families on the island) participating in the event! We were able to reach so many people and it was an incredible time of hope for the people of this island!

This was also a time where we were able to showcase our Jinamok Children’s Choir that was organized and directed by two local facilitators. Here is a video clip,

It was an extremely inspiring moment, that everyone was moved by. One of our local leaders, Cho, told us “It was such a moving time and parents were completely blessed to see their kids developed in their singing talent and the song they sang was so encouraging that others can't help but get teary-eyed.”

It’s moments like these the remind us of why we do what we do. It’s why we are even here. It’s easy to get so busy that we forget what it is we are working for and then it’s the little moments of seeing hope come from someones eyes that it brings it back home for us and as Samuel Smiles said, “Hope is like the sun, which, as we journey toward it, casts the shadow of our burden behind us.”